Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) (24 page)

"The empire will
hear me speak!" Jaren cried. "Seraphim and slaves will hear of
Meliora, will hear of you, Kalafi! Free my son. Free Vale of Requiem! Free him
or all will hear of a night long ago."

Of a young slave,
Jaren added silently. A young man who had served a queen. A queen who had slain
her husband, who had loved the young man, who had betrayed her dynasty, who held
a secret . . . a secret that could save a life.

And onto the balcony
she came, clad in muslin and diamonds, a crown on her head, fear in her eyes.
Queen Kalafi, Great in Graces. Mother of his child.

She stood in the
distance, so far he could barely see her, but he gazed upon her with the light
of his stars. He stared into her eyes.

"Enough!"
Jaren said. "Free him. Free my son!"

Free him or the
empire will know who fathered your daughter,
Jaren added silently. And he
knew she could hear those words too. She stood in a great palace, a queen of
gold and plenty, beautiful and immortal. He stood below on bloody earth, a
slave in chains, ragged and aging. Across the distance, they stared into each
other's eyes.

Thirty years ago,
when I was young and fair, a servant in your palace, you took me into your bed.
I gave you a daughter. Give me back my son.

Kalafi nodded.

She spoke two
words—words for her servants, words he could hear even down here.

"Free him."

As the city watched,
seraphim flew toward Vale. He screamed as they tugged the nails from his hands
and feet . . . then fell silent. On the wings of seraphim, he glided down
toward the ground, and the cruel masters of light laid Jaren's son at his feet.

"Oh, Vale,"
Elory whispered. She knelt by her brother and placed her hand on his cheek.

The other slaves
gathered around, crying out in dismay, and seraphim laughed and shouted. Jaren
knelt too before his son—the poor, ravaged thing they had turned his son into.

Vale lay shuddering,
struggling for breath, his lifeblood leaking away, cut a thousand times. Dying.
Ashen. Barely any life still in him.

"Vale!" Elory
cried, trying to staunch his wounds. "Oh sweet Vale."

Beaten, broken,
bleeding, Vale opened his mouth. He tried to speak, but only hoarse words left
him. His teeth had been bashed in, his eye socket cracked, and a cut on his
side exposed his organs. Vultures had pecked at his flesh, ripping bits off,
tugging bits out. Elory wept, closed her eyes, and held Vale's ravaged hands.

Jaren looked up at the
sky. The sun of this cruel southern empire beat down, white and blinding. But
that sunlight was only a curtain, only a cage. Beyond it, far beyond the
distance, shone the stars. The stars of Requiem were not visible from this
land, but Jaren knew they were up there, knew they could hear him, blessed him.

"Stars of
Requiem," Jaren prayed, staring up into the light, past the light, into
darkness, to the gods of his forebears. "Shine upon him, Draco
constellation. Shine your light. Heal your son."

Jaren thought that he
could see them above, even past the sky of seraphim: the halls of Requiem,
woven of starlight, twins to the fallen marble halls in a burnt forest. And
they were waiting there: the heroes of Requiem, great kings and queens,
warriors and poets, his own wife. Waiting for Vale, waiting to welcome him into
their embrace.

"Now is not his
time," Jaren whispered to them. "Let him live, stars of Requiem,
souls of the Vir Requis. Heal his body. Let him live longer under the
sun."

It seemed to Jaren as
he stared skyward, as Elory wept, that he heard the song of harps from above,
that he heard the souls of the fallen.

Let him rest,
they
said.
Let him no longer suffer in chains.

Jaren shook his head.
"He still has work upon this world. He still must walk at my side. He will
not rest while his people languish. Let my son live. Let him fight."

The Draco constellation
shone above, stars forming a great dragon with a gleaming eye.

Strands of starlight
fell like rain.

The tears of Requiem
shone upon the world.

The light of those who had
come before. The light of stars. The light of dragons. It fell in curtains,
gleaming, healing in the cruel sunlight.

"Breathe,
Vale!" Elory shouted, the light cascading across her. She looked toward
Jaren, eyes wet, holding her brother in her arms. "He's not
breathing!"

The light kept falling,
a silver rain, breaking apart, scattering, lifting Vale like a mother lifting a
lifeless child. He hovered before them, limp, broken, wrapped in strands of
starlight. The song of harps played in the wind, the song of Requiem.

You will always find
our sky.

"Heal him,
stars," Jaren whispered. "Heal my son so that he might walk your path
upon the world."

As he stared at the
hovering body of his son, it seemed to Jaren that he saw a figure all in white,
woven of starlight. A young woman, angelic, clad in flowing robes, her braid
hanging across her shoulder. Her eyes shone like the stars, gazing down upon
Vale, and she laid her hands upon him. When Jaren looked up, back to the stars,
he saw that the dragon's eye—Issari's Star—had gone dark, had descended to
this world.

Jaren fell to his knees
before the woman of light.

"Issari," he
whispered. "Princess Issari, Priestess of Starlight, Eye of the Dragon.
Blessed be your name, Issari Seran of Requiem."

Her hands rested upon
Vale, rivulets of light spreading from them, wrapping around the broken body,
mending, healing. Issari—among the greatest heroines of Requiem's first days,
a founder of the nation, a great healer and priestess—raised her eyes from her
task and stared at Jaren.

And then she was gone.

The light faded.

The song died.

Once more, the cruel
sunlight of Saraph slammed down against the cobblestones.

Vale lay on the ground,
wrapped in Elory's arms. Blood still coated him. A collar still encircled his
neck. His clothes were still torn.

"He's alive,"
Elory whispered, sobbing, pulling him close against her. "Vale, Vale.
Sweet brother."

His chest rose and fell
with breath, and Jaren knelt and wiped the blood away, revealing healed flesh.
Only scars remained upon his side, his hands, his legs, old white wounds,
washed away.

Thank you, Issari,
healer of Requiem.

Then Jaren could retain
his composure no more. His body shook with sobs, and he pulled his son close,
squeezing him, never wanting to let go. Vale's eyes fluttered open, and he
smiled softly and held his father and sister.

The other slaves
gathered around, gazing with wide eyes. Men, women, and children who had defied
the seraphim, who had endured whip and spear, refusing to kneel before
Ishtafel—now they knelt before Jaren and his family. Now they bowed their
heads.

"A miracle,"
one old man whispered, back scarred from decades of servitude.

"The stars shine
again!" said a young man, raising chained arms.

Elory nodded, staring
skyward, the Draco constellation reflected in her eyes. "We are not
forgotten."

 
 
MELIORA

"She fell from the
sky."

"Fell like a star
of Requiem."

"She fell like a
dragon! A dragon all in silver and gold, of feathers and scales, of sunlight
and starlight."

Meliora blinked. The
world was fuzzy, the light like feathers, scattering around her, mottled with
dust. She coughed, and pain raced across her. Everything hurt—her belly, her
chest, her spine, her eyes, her head. She blinked again, struggling to bring
the world into focus.

She lay in an alleyway
between weedy brick walls. Laundry hung on strings above, and an alley cat
hissed. Graffito sprawled across one wall, showing a crowned seraph—presumably
Ishtafel—with a baby dragon chomping on his backside. Two hundred yards away,
the alley opened up onto the main boulevard; a crowd marched there, crying out
in many voices.

"She's
awake!" rose one of the voices, one near Meliora. A shadow fell across
her.

"I know she's
awake. Step back, give her some room."

Meliora pushed herself
onto her elbows and her eyes widened. She gasped.

"Kira!" she
said. "Talana!"

Her two old slaves,
saved from the bull and banished into Tofet, smiled at her.

No, not slaves, never
again,
Meliora thought.
Vir Requis. My people.

The memories flooded
her, as powerful as a storm. Elory telling her the truth. Leaping off her
balcony. Flying as a dragon—a real dragon of Requiem.

My father is Vir
Requis.
Meliora trembled wildly.
The blood of dragons flows through me.
I'm not the king's daughter.

The shock flowed through
her, spinning her head, and yet . . . and yet somehow Meliora had always known.
Her short stature—only six feet tall, shorter than almost all other seraphim
of the courts. Her childhood dreams of dragons. Her longing gazes at the stars
at night. Her kinship with her slaves. Her people.

"You are my
people," she whispered.

She winced. Every word
shot pain through her. She looked down at her body, and she saw bandaged
wounds, scratches, burn marks.

"We caught you
when you fell," Kira said, dark eyes shining. "You almost
died
.
You flew as a dragon, Meliora! How did you do that? A real dragon like the Vir
Requis of old."

Talana—pale of skin,
her stubbly hair red—shook her head. "Not like a Vir Requis. We have
wings like leather. She had feathery wings and feathers on her back instead of
spikes. And she still had a halo, even as a dragon."

Kira—darker than her
companion, her skin olive and her stubbly hair black—groaned. "You've
never even seen a real dragon."

"I have!"
Talana stamped her feet. "They fly all the time over construction sites,
and I watch them." She sighed wistfully and tugged at her collar. "I
wish I could become a dragon someday. I can feel the magic inside me,
itching."

"That's the
cricket you ate yesterday." Kira glowered at her friend. "I told you
not to eat it."

"Crickets are
good!" Talana pouted. "If you stick 'em on a stick and fry 'em,
they—"

Meliora rose to feet,
wobbly. "Your collars," she whispered. "Your collars! You can
become dragons without them."

The two young women,
collared and hobbled, stared at their former mistress, lost for words. Meliora
sucked in a breath and clutched her spinning head.

I have to remove
their collars. I have to find the Keeper's Key.

Meliora had to lean
against the alley's wall. She had seen the key before—a long, crimson key
engraved with golden runes. It was imbued with ancient magic, tying it to the
curse of the collars. It fit into no padlock. At a mere touch, its old, dark
power let it break the curse upon the collars, then cast it again. For five
hundred years, her family had safeguarded this key—the key to their power.

"The Keeper's Key,"
Meliora whispered. "A way to remove the collars. I have to find it."

Kira and Talana glanced
at each other, then back at Meliora.

"But . . . my
lady." Kira shuddered. "They say that only the highest ranking
seraphim ever carry the key."

Talana nodded.
"They say only one Keeper's Key even exists! That it's only carried by—"

"—the royal
family," Meliora whispered.

She spread her seraph
wings.

She flew.

Leaving her slaves—no,
not her slaves, her fellow Vir Requis—Meliora soared into the sky and flew
above the City of Kings. Many slaves were gathered around the ziggurat, and
many seraphim flew above. Blood stained the steeple of the ziggurat, a red
pupil in the great Eye of Saraph, but the slave who had been nailed there was
gone.

And there, on the
balcony beneath the bloodstain, she stood—Queen Kalafi.

Meliora flew toward
her.

Her lips peeled back,
her eyes narrowed, and her hands balled into fists.

The woman who lied
to me.
Meliora snarled.
The woman who blindfolded me, who kept me in a
darkness of gilt and gemstones. The woman who raised me to spit upon the people
whose blood flows through me, whose blood she spills upon our fair city.

Kalafi stood in
fineries, resplendent—her golden hair flowing and lustrous, her tiara
gleaming, her kalasiri strewn with thousands of diamonds. Wings spread wide,
feathers charred, blood staining her bandages, Meliora landed before the queen.
They stood facing each other—an ancient seraph of immortal beauty, and a young
daughter with dragon blood in her veins, only just awakened to the world.

"Daughter,"
Kalafi said, reaching out to her.

Meliora took a step
back. "Mother."

"Meliora,"
Kalafi whispered, reaching to her again.

Again Meliora stepped
away. The city spun below her, and the chanting pounded against her skull. She
stepped into her mother's chamber, leaving the balcony. The heated pool steamed
before her, and the splendor of the chamber glittered: columns of silver and
gold, jeweled vases, statues of precious metals, artifacts from distant lands,
priceless rugs, murals, mosaics. Everywhere Meliora looked: the luxury of an
empire.

Meliora thought back to
the land of Tofet, just across the river. A nightmare. A hellish landscape of
cracked earth, pits of steaming tar, of slaves crawling, limping, suffering
under the yoke and the whips of their masters, crying out. Slaves laboring to
carve bricks for palaces such as this one. To dig up the bitumen that held
those bricks together, that glued jewels to gold and stones onto mosaics, that
waterproofed the ships that brought these treasures from distant lands. Black
tar and the red blood of slaves—the fuel of the empire, of the dynasty Meliora
had been born into, the dynasty that was a lie.